The above photograph features a rudimentary concept sketch of ARPANET illustrated in 1969. By 1970, ARPANET had connected the two coasts of the United States. Three years later, the network went global.
The 1970s also ushered in e-mail and the TCP/IP communications protocols, which allowed multiple networks to connect—and formed the Internet. The ‘80s gave birth to an addressing system with suffixes like “.com” and “.org” in widespread use today.